


Out Of The Machinery

by Rubynye



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Racist Language, Restraints, Sexual Harassment, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 04:44:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6940297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has a chat, Vision takes a hint, prison really sucks, and Wanda does some thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out Of The Machinery

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel, simply because I've wanted to use it for years and it fits here. More comments after the story.
> 
> Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War .

Vision practices leaning against a wall, this time from the inside, while listening to Mr. Stark negotiate with Secretary Ross. Even without speakerphone he can hear both, including Ross's dry amusement as he offers, "A year, knock it down to nine or even six months if they behave."

"And they get their wallets back and are released to American soil," Mr. Stark specifies, pointing his pen at the phone as if Ross could see it.

Ross's laugh, Vision thinks, would be described in literature as a 'bark'. "What, as opposed to releasing them overboard into the ocean? Maybe all you have is a hammer, Stark, but that doesn't mean I'm a supervillain." Mr. Stark purses his lips. "Or a nail." And rolls his eyes.

All he says, however, is, "Just give me the date and the coordinates so I can scramble my favorite five-seater."

"You'll only need four," precipitously accelerates Mr. Stark's pulse, and Vision identifies his own chilly, acrid sensation as shock. "You can have the Americans back. The Sokovian girl stays for good."

"Like Hell she will," Mr. Stark flings his pen across the room, not even noticing when Vision extends a hand through the wall to catch it. "Let her out. I'll take personal responsibility for her."

"Like you did before?" Ross asks, and Mr. Stark's teeth squeak as he grinds them. "She's not even an American citizen, what do you care?"

"She's my teammate," Stark says, and Vision realizes he anticipated a pause or an assent, that he feels gladness on hearing Mr. Stark's unhesitating defiance. "I _care_."

"Even Sokovia doesn't want her back. Not to mention she's a former, supposedly, Hydra operative. Or her inhuman powers." Ross's voice rises on each statement, three more decibels, four, five. "She stays."

"The others won't leave without her." Mr. Stark's eyes are wide, focused downward on his desk.

"Then they can stay along with her, for the rest of their natural lives!" Ross takes a deep breath, there is a pause, and Vision waits for Mr. Stark to respond. However, Ross is the one who speaks next. "I seem to recall... You mentioned Barton's got kids?" Stark shuts his eyes. "If he's going to be an absent father, maybe we should look into custody arrangements, have the State take over their care."

Another pause, and Mr. Stark's voice is low as he says, "That's not even super. It's just villainous." Ross inhales in the way humans do when they smile. "Barnes was framed, Ross. They didn't aid and abet much worse than resisting arrest. You can't actually throw away the key on them. Any of them."

"I have to go, Stark," is all Ross replies. "Of course, if you sweetened the pot, maybe we could be more lenient, even about the girl." A few more silent seconds, and he finishes with, "I look forward to hearing your answer." and ends the call.

Mr. Stark sits very still for most of a minute, barely even breathing. Vision waits, and does not breathe, and observes. At length Mr. Stark touches a screen beside him and a map of the northern Atlantic opens up, overlain with a grid. Another touch and a dot appears, red against the ocean blue. 

Mr. Stark watches it blink for another span of time. Finally he says, "Well, I'm probably off the guest list, at least for now," as he taps his finger directly beneath the flashing dot. "Too bad I don't have anyone to check up on them. Especially not someone who can walk through walls."

After due consideration, Vision concludes this is an example of a hint. Another few moments, and Mr. Stark sighs, stands up as if his clothes weigh as much as the armor, and exits his office, leaving the map display up.

Vision notes the coordinates, takes stock of his power reserves, and takes the hint.

_^ ^ ^ ^ ^_

_tap tap tap_ and the hiss of air between teeth. Wanda does not look up.

"Hey, Witch-puppy!" She can already identify the guards by voice, especially the nasal tones of everyone's least favorite. Her teammates call out in weary protest, and she wonders how long it will be before they have no more energy for useless objections.

"Hey you! Look at me!" Her fingers itch, held rigid by the hard rubber gloves. Her arms and back prickle within the canvas of the restraint jacket. The sedative weighs her down like lead in her veins, but she's still young and she longs to _move_. But not right now. Right now, unmistakeable even beneath her teammates' shouts, she hears the scrape of fingers over cloth, rubbing repeatedly. So Wanda stays still and doesn't look up.

Once was twice too many, after all. Two days after Stark's visit, by her estimation (three meals, two sleeps, five intermissions in her bondage for sanitary tasks), she heard a rap on the glass and looked up, to see this guard smirking viciously as he stroked his crotch through his uniform, rocking his hips forward towards the glass, towards her.

She remembers her shriek of shocked rage, the flash of red reflecting off the glass before it cracked into a web, her teammates's booming voices as they noticed and started shouting. She remembers the guard's jagged grin as he stepped back, as the gas hissed out around her, chill and stinging, rendering her senseless before she could cry out a 'no!'

Wanda woke up dizzy in the cell across the way, and soon learned she'd gained another time marker. Two meals, three sanitary breaks, and now two injections each day, or however long it was between sleeps. And to randomly punctuate the intervals between, unwelcome visits from their least favorite guard, who bangs on the glass of their cells, who mocks them from behind its safety. Who's returned today to rub himself in Wanda's face, apparently.

She wiggles her toes inside her slippers, the only choice of motion she has, and does not look up.

"Come on, man," Clint shouts, "would you want someone to treat your sister like that?" 

The stroking noise stops. If she were younger, even stupider, she might hope. Instead she listens to the guard shout, " _My_ sister's not a common criminal!"

She hears Clint shout back, "The guys on the corner all say she's uncommon!" She hears Scott laugh, and Sam's low-voiced curse. And she hears the double click as the guard manually closes the air intakes to Clint's cell. "What's that?" he snaps over Clint's muffled voice. "I can't hear you!"

Wanda hears the bench clank as Clint sits. She pictures him holding himself still, like her, waiting it out. The vents can be set to automatically unlatch: they all learned that on the first day, as well as how fifteen sealed minutes took their little boxes of air from stuffy to coffinlike. She remembers the sound of her gasps in her own ears, so like her agonized panting after Baron Strucker ran the Gem's energies through her nerves and blood.

She wonders how long until the guard lets the latches release. If at all.

She listens to Scott foolishly, bravely shout, "That's completely unnecessary!"

And she hears the guard snarl at him, "What's the matter? Feeling lonely?" If her hands were free she'd cover her ears. "So sorry there's no general population here to take turns sticking it up your ass, but --"

"-- excuse for a soldier," Sam says quietly, and all other sound in the room seems to stop. Wanda squeezes her eyes shut. "You know you can't kill us or Ross wouldn't've bothered putting us in here to start with. Open Cell B's vents already."

The guard laughs. If Wanda's hands were free she'd rip his voice box from his throat. "Shut up, monkey," he retorts. "Running around like a hero when you're just a common thug. Enjoy your cage where you belong. Ook ook ook." 

"You should get a lid on those envy issues," Sam says, and once Wanda would have thought his tone was mild. Now, after a year as his teammate, she can hear the strain beneath.

"How about you get a lid on your oxygen addiction, monkey," the guard answers, and Wanda's chest tightens airlessly, as if it were her cell being sealed off.

Another voice booms from the ceiling. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING." Wanda has only heard this one, not seen him. Relief washes through her, chased closely by disgust. None of these guards should be associated with any comfort. "GET BACK UP HERE. OPEN CELL B'S VENTS ON YOUR WAY."

"Fuck you all." The guard's boots thud on the metal floor. "Especially you, you little witch." Wanda presses her chin to the jacket's rough collar. 

She hears the vents click open. She hears Clint take a deep breath. She hears footsteps thump away to the lift.

The silence oozes like bitter honey. Wanda feels her hair lying on her cheeks, the canvas beneath her chin and strapped around her body, and breathes slowly against the tightness in her chest.

Eventually Scott says, "Well, that made a change from the monotony." His voice shakes. "Hey, Sam, you okay?"

Clint answers instead. "Give him a minute. How 'bout you, Wanda?"

Right now, she doesn't feel capable of words. Her attempted hum emerges more like a muffled wail. She rests her cheek on her shoulder and hopes Clint heard her.

 _Little witch,_ Stark had called her. She and Pietro had given up the hatred that fueled them, had fought beside Stark and his team to save their country and the world; Pietro died, and Wanda dedicated her life to atoning, to the Avengers, to doing good. And this is where that path led her, to be locked in a glass-walled box, helpless as this disgusting guard harasses her and her teammates.

Wasn't she supposed to never be helpless again? Wanda asks herself, seeing red behind her closed eyelids. Weren't she and Pietro supposed to gain the power to prevent anyone else from suffering as they had?

Wanda's eyes burn, and she swallows hard, her dry throat clicking. She will not cry. When Pietro died and half her soul with him, she screamed but she didn't cry. She presses her fingers against the gloves and reminds herself that when Strucker strapped her down and pressed the alien scepter to her forehead, she shook and she burned but she didn't cry. These walls, these guards, whether callous or cruel, don't deserve her tears now.

She thinks of Strucker, advising her and Pietro about Hydra's American cells. _Americans wish to call themselves heroes,_ he had said, _so when misfortune strikes they will blame you in order to protect their precious self-images._ Is that how she came to be here, by following Americans and their heroic self-delusions?

But she hears her teammates breathe and rustle, hears Sam murmur something gentle and Scott's soft answering chuckle, and remembers how Clint rescued her from house arrest, how they've all stood up for her sake, for each other's. She thinks of Natasha (though Natasha turned on them, though it hurts), formerly her mentor on this journey, having walked this path before her. She thinks of Steve, unwavering in his faith, ready to cast aside his title and honors and the whole world's admiration for the sake of his friend. And she thinks of the Vision, as knowledgeable as a professor and as enthusiastic as a child, of the delight she took in watching him grow into himself, and her eyes prickle.

Wanda thinks, perhaps this is her true atonement, this endless series of empty days spent bound in restraints. Perhaps it is the real price she must pay for aiding Ultron, for losing her hold in Lagos, for all the chaos she's caused. Bleak as the thought is, its logic, its justice, has a sad comfort to it.

A different sound whispers in her ear, a swish of metallic silk, and she looks up. The Vision stands beside her, wearing slacks and a sweater, incongruous as a hallucination, but she can feel him, the air displaced around him, the smooth coolness of his mind as he steps near and lays a hand on her clothbound shoulder, kneeling beside her.

"Have you come to gloat too?" Wanda wonders, her voice small and wet instead of cold and sharp. He shakes his head just slightly, and smiles at her so very gently.

All at once Wanda is crying. All at once sobs shudder through her as she falls sideways, and Vision catches her, his arms warm and flesh-firm. He settles his head on her chest, stroking her hair back from her face as she presses her cheek to his simulated clothing, to the perfect steadiness of his heartbeat, and all the misery and humiliation pours forth in hot streams.

Vision holds her silently, no cloying crooning, no false reassurances. After a little while the wetness gathering beneath her cheek reverses to soft dryness as Vision textures his chest to soak up her tears, and the strange feeling startles Wanda out of the cycling sobs. Snuffling, coughing, she rubs her face clean as his gentle fingers hold her hair out of the way. She had thought she might never feel another's touch on her hair again, and agonized relief rattles her fragile control. But she swallows hard, breathes deep, and looks up into Vision's kind purple face.

"Wanda?" Clint calls, and Vision puts a forefinger to his little smile. "You okay, kid?"

Wanda hums, then coughs and makes herself answer in words, "Okay, Clint. Just, I hate this jacket."

"Sure not your style," Sam calls, and Scott and Clint snicker. Wanda exhales a crushed little laugh and leans against Vision again, half expecting to fall through to the floor.

She doesn't. He catches her, human-warm and dry as if she'd never wept on him, and smoothes her hair back from her face once more. "I came to see how you are," he whispers.

"How I am? I want to put my arms around you." She shrugs her shoulders as far as the jacket will allow. "I've been in a box for six days, me and my friends. When they locked us in they said we'll die here." 

Vision inhales above her head. "That is untrue," he tells her. "Mr. Stark --" Wanda snorts as eloquently as she can, but Vision continues, soft and implacable, "--is working towards your release." 

Surprised into curiosity, Wanda asks, "Why does he care?". With her locked away Stark can claim there's no longer any reason to fear; he can blame all the chaos and pain on the four of them, on her, and emerge vindicated in the world's view. 

"Because you are his teammate," Vision tells her. "And my friend." He reaches in through the jacket and the glove to touch his fingertips to hers. "We will not abandon you here."

Wanda's heart strains its tethers. "Thank you." Though she feels compelled to remind herself and him, "though even you can't carry all of us across the ocean, even if they didn't shoot at you while you tried."

"True," Vision agrees, before he's interrupted by the clang of the dinner cart. He stands, releasing Wanda, and fades into the wall behind her; she feels the air swirl into the space, and presses her chin down into the dejected pose the guards expect to see. 

The routine is set by now. The guard, fortunately not the worst one, hands each man a paper plate of nutrient-loaf and a plastic bottle of water, and sets Wanda's share outside her cell for later. Clint and Scott joke about the food, with occasional comments from Sam, but they mostly eat in silence. Scott was the one who first identified the grey, green-laced lumps they've been handed each meal, with a dismayed cry of, "Punishment loaf? We didn't even riot yet!"

Fifteen minutes, with Vision's hidden presence prickling down her skin, until the guard returns to collect the plates and bottles, and then comes to Wanda's cell. Another guard joins him, weapon at the ready, as if she couldn't handle them both if she chose; the first guard lifts her to her feet, unbuckles her jacket, folds back her cuffs, and removes the rigid gloves.

It feels blissful to stretch out her arms, to wiggle her fingers. She does it slowly, to not alarm the guards, so she spends a whole minute of her meal break just on movement. Not that it takes her very long to choke down what little she can of the cold, sodden meal loaf. 

She drinks every drop of the water, though. 

When the guards have buckled her back into her confinement, collected her dinner leavings, and departed, Wanda is left standing against the wall. She leans against it and Vision doesn't make her wait long. "I don't even eat and that looked unappetizing," he murmurs, and it's a sweet, already unfamiliar pleasure to smile.

"I would far rather have your soup," she tells him. "We have an hour before our sanitary breaks." She wants to clutch him like a child, but says instead, "You should visit the others, they need encouragement too."

"Of course." Vision turns towards her, resting their foreheads together, the Mind Gem warm and smooth between her eyes. "But I will return."

Hope hurts, but for just this moment Wanda allows it. "Thank you," she murmurs to him. "Vision. Thank you."

_^ ^ ^ ^ ^_

The way out leads through the observation room, its floor scattered with unconscious guards. Sam's watching his footing, trying not to step on anyone more from expedience than tenderheartedness, when Steve pauses. He looks up to ask why the _hell_ they're stopping --

Steve is watching Wanda, who's pulled away from his supporting hold. Red light swirls between her fingers as she extends her hand over the exposed nape of a guard slumped on the desk in front of the staticky monitors. Sam recognizes the man, the guard who has a particular hate-on for them. The one who's sexually harassed Wanda. 

Short dark hairs rise beneath her glowing hand, and none of them breathe. Clint says nothing. Scott damn well says nothing. Even Steve says nothing. If Sam were a better man he'd say something, but... they really didn't need this joker's soundtrack atop all of prison's other joys. (Sam will forget those 'monkey' jeers, one day. Someday.) The way he's treated Wanda in particular is downright obscene. 

So Sam watches Wanda standing over the prone guard, her power shimmering in her hand, for a long, still moment. Then the glow recedes into her skin, she drops her arm to her side, and she shrugs as she turns away, leaving the asshole guard completely unharmed down to the tiniest hairs on his asshole head. "Just thinking," she says, leaning back against Steve's shoulder, and as he firms up his steadying hold on her waist he gives her an approving nod.

Sam inhales, listening to Scott sigh as they start moving again, and watches Wanda's shoulders relax, sloughing off the prison, as she lifts her chin and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this because I could not bear to think of Tony Stark and the Vision sitting around feeling righteous while their erstwhile teammates and another good guy languished in jail. Then I thought about Wanda and her choices, and the story grew into its final version.
> 
> Next: to write some of the absolutely necessary Sam/Steve based on CA:CW.


End file.
